please dont antagonize the barracuda

longest weekend ever.
because eric (one of the 2 other people taking the open water class) had school until like 10 pm on thursday, we had to take the 1245 bus out of cairo to hurgada, which meant that we arrived at this filthy little tourist town at about 830 in the morning. seriously, hurgada is lovely when you are on the red sea, but the town is basically a long strip of nice looking hotels and condos along the beach with a huge pile of debris and trash in back. we called our dive instructor, osama, when we disembarked and he told our cab driver where to go; we arrived at the hotel, sorted out our gear, and were out to sea by nine. loay was there too (he was one of the guys who helped train us in the pool last week), and between the two of them they had like 12 years of experience in the red sea, so we were in pretty good hands.
id like to get the negative part out of the way first, just so that the whining doesnt come out through the rest of the story. i think im allergic to cairo; it is horribly polluted and everyone smokes, and this combination has given me a sinus infection that just wont quit (at least thats my theory, although it could easily be something completely different; who the heck knows, maybe im allergic to luke). in all of the diving dvds that i watched for my class, they stressed not diving with congestion or a cold, but i pretty much completely disregarded the warning despite the fact that my snot is a lovely shade reminiscent of shamrocks. and now my head feels like it just might explode; its like the worst hangover i have ever had, only i dont really get hangovers and i didnt drink, so its like i would imagine the worst hangover would be. infected snot and triple atmospheric pressure just dont mix. but anyhoo, thats all that was bad about the weekend. enough of that.
we were in the water at about ten and we spent the first half of the first dive working on skills: flooding and clearing the mask, removing and cleaning the respirator, achieving neutral buoyancy, etc. as the dives progressed, we spent less and less time on skills until on the last one we spent 50 minutes diving and 2 minutes practicing how to swim up fast if you are out of air.
the visibility in the red sea is amazing. even from above the water you can see all the way to the bottom in most places; where we were it was usually only about 12 to 15 meters deep, but still, thats some clear water. i will try to rattle off as many fish as i can remember, but the point of the matter is that some of these were the most colorful and arguably the most beautiful animals i have ever seen. we have the parrot fish (a weird blend of green and purple with a face that resembles a beak), soldier fish, angel fish, lion fish (yeah, the awesome one at the zoo that looks like it has feathers; i could have touched it), clown fish (yes, like nemo, chilling in the anemone), sea snake, blue spotted ray, barracuda (mostly small, but some as big as a meter; we avoided these), trumpet fish, some sort of eel (i didnt see it, but apparently i wasnt looking in the right place) puffer fish (un-puffed, alas), tiger fish (orange and purple striped, very beautiful), some crazy purple-and-green-striped thing whose name i forgot but which was my favorite, go figure, flying fish, um... thats all i remember. there were tons of tiny fish that osama didnt give the names of, too, and there were supposedly turtles, octopi, calimari, and dolphins, but accounts vary and i didnt personally see any of those. it was still rocking, though.
and, naturally, there was some coral in addition to the fish. there were several points where i was swimming through a fat canyon with walls of coral on both sides and underneath: quite breathtaking, which was unfortunate since i was underwater (little joke there, eh). the coolest formations, though, were the random 3 or 4 meter pinnacles out in the middle of nowhere. we would be swimming by some huge wall of coral and then out toward the open sea a ways there would be this little outpost of coral with its own collection of fish and everything. these tended to have the most colorful populations, but i dont know the names of any corals (except brains) so its sort of hard to describe.
and some random dude followed us around (including underwater) with a video camera and then tried to sell us the dvd of our first dive for 35 euro a piece (ridiculous), but eric and kat haggled him down and bought 1 for 150 pounds (like 30 usd) so as soon as i get a burned copy ill... i dont know. do something with it. im sort of technologically impaired, so i might just use it as a coaster, but luke will probably post bits of it on youtube so ill give the link out.
i honestly enjoyed the boating more than the diving. i mean, being underwater and looking at fish for an hour is all well and good, but nothing compares to sitting in the sun smelling the salt air and looking out across miles of clear blue (actually we could see land in 3 directions since we were in the northernmost tip of the red sea, wedged between egypt and sinai, but that didnt take away from the effect at all). our boat was surprisingly nice, too. i sort of expected osama just to take us to the beach so that we could wade into the water and swim around, but we actually got into a yacht-like contraption complete with three decks and a galley. i will probably halfheartedly continue to scuba dive just as an excuse to boat :)
another cool thing about hurgada is the fact that it is a pretty hardcore tourist trap which means that it was filled europeans which means that it was filled with eye candy. there were so many bikinis... and just as many speedos. the first day we were at a very crowded dive site; there were probably 30 boats out there, all at least as big as ours (that is, about 12 divers), and there were several that seriously unloaded like 30 snorkelers. so when we werent underwater, we were on the top deck checking out the scenery. eric complained the first day that we didnt have any hot chicks tanning on our boat, but i pointed out that the other boats more than filled the quota, plus our boat was also devoid of fat, hairy men in speedos, which i think balanced out the aforementioned lack. and plus the second day we did have two very attractive russians who tanned pretty much all day, so karma, i guess. and there was, believe it or not, a girl who snorkeled in a thong. that really just made me laugh because, come on, darlin- your bare butt is just sticking right out of the water for all to admire.
osama (the instructor) was a super cool guy, and not just because he was cool by nature but also because he let us crash at his house for free. he had about the most amazing house i have ever seen; the walls were painted ridiculous colors, including a pink and black checkered bedroom; the kitchen was covered with pictures of pink elephants; the toilet seat was filled with barbed wire (transparent seat, not painful, just weird); and he had what looked like a gigantic cut out paper slowflake woven into cascading rings dangling from the ceiling (i later discovered that this was a lamp). in addition to letting us crash with him, he cooked us dinner for iftar, so we broke fast with him and loay (not that we were breaking fast; it was my fourth meal of the day). osama swore that he didnt know how to cook, despite the fact that he has been living alone since he was like 14, but the next thing i knew the stove was covered with pans of vegetables and rice and chicken which was all delicious, so i called him out on being able to cook and loay admitted that everything but the rice was frozen and pre-made. alas.
its late; thats all.